Because she was still on vacation for the Spring Festival holiday, Carmen and I hung out for the next few days I was in Chengdu.  Eventually, she invited me to go with her to visit several areas near where she grew up.

The two of us spent one day in Langzhong, famous for its connection to a hero of Chinese literature.  Zhang Fei in the Romance of the Three Kingdoms is something similar to the character of Achilles in The Odyssey.  Except more loyal.  And more capable.  And a better governor.  Zhang Fei ruled over the area of Langzhong for many years and now temples/parades/dried beef/etc all bear his name in the area.

In one of the temples, there was even a statue depicting the Peach Garden Oath from the Three Kingdoms books.

Carmen also inivited me to Nanbu, her hometown.  We saw temples and went on boat rides and other touristy stuff around town, but more exciting was just hanging out with her family.  Her aunt that we were staying with cooked us dinner the first night we were there, and through the help of the Aunt, Cousin, and Carmen I finally picked up the rules to Mahjong.  The next night her Uncle (a truck driver) was back in town, and invited us out to a banquet with all the family members who still lived in Nanbu.  The banquet went as banquets tend to go in China, and by the end of the night most of her uncles were red in the face and was pretty proud of myself.  The next morning we caught a ride back with one of Carmen’s uncles, who had to get back to Chengdu to get back to work (in the family business: selling steel to construction companies).  Unfortunately I didn’t get pictures during most of the family activities due in part to my shyness and in part to just being busy trying to communicate.  Kudos to Carmen, because she had to translate a lot of the Mandarin and all of the Sichuan dialect that her family was throwing at me.  Even with not being able to understand a lot of what was happening, the whole thing was easily one of the cooler experiences I’ve had in China.